On The Road

Wanting to live up their well earned reputation as great trip planners (earned by their two wonderful adventure trips with us while living in Morocco), Jenny and Michael had apparently spent countless hours researching this one. 

We rented a diesel Ford truck, packed it full and they did the same with their Ford Explorer. After lunch on Thursday, we took off.Getting out of busy Vientiane took a little while. The countryside looked a little like a mix of East Texas red dirt and West Texas scrubby trees, but soon turned a little more mountainous. About four hours later we arrived in Vang Vieng. This is the poor little town that has been besieged by back packers over the last several years. It became known, as the "Anything goes" place. Lots of free thinking young people from all over the world have come here and partied. I think the. Town officials cracked down on a little of this, but there still are a lot of backpackers present. We had reservations for the night at Villa Terra. We had to pay to cross the rickety looking wooden bridge, park on a muddy river bank and cross another foot bridge to get here:

Yes, those are our rooms located along another wooden walkway above the rice paddies. 

The view from our porch back to the office.

Our view of the mountains.

Our room.

Philip on front deck.

We walked back across all the bridges that night and went back onto the Main Street and went to dinner.  The excellent open air restaurant was literally a one man show. The owner, a Lao man who had lived in Germany for many years,  owned the restaurant and was the chef and waiter. The item he was well known for was Schnitzel. It was delicious. He cooked everything right out front, behinds a little screen while we, and other tables waited. As people came in to sit, he would explain how long the wait would be due to previous orders. No one chose to leave - a sign of how good his food was. We had a nice and very quiet evening. Good thing. Our next day was to be a test of Michael and Philip's driving skills.